The Weekly Recap

Hello, here is this week’s recap:)

The first trip report of the week is from Scotland and contains a surprisingly large number of mammals: 4 species of dolphin and whale, two types of hare, seal and deer, and more. I didn’t realise Scotland was so good for mammals. Maybe they like the scent of deep-fried mars bars… 

Next is the long-awaited (well, not by me) Pictus Safaris trip report from Chad. It’s packed full of amazing mammals, from the Scimitar-horned Oryx to the Libyan Striped Weasel – a total of 80 species across all three 2023 trips (and 293 bird species!). 

This debut trip report from Costa Rica is impressive, especially for a first mammal trip. It features rodents, monkeys and bats galore as well as adorable pictures of a captive peccary, porcupine and margay amongst other species (all looking very huggable). 

Last is this short and sweet trip to Borneo: Sunda Pangolins, Marbled Cats, Otter Civets… and a YouTube compilation of beautiful clips of some of the mammals that puts my dad’s blurry videos to shame. Just kidding, those are great too – especially if human thumb is on your life list. 

This post about Streaked Dwarf Porcupine in northeastern Peru is interesting, as seems to the first sighting of them in the region. They’re great pictures too, and once again the porcupines are adorable. They’re rising very quickly on my cutest mammal ranking (after sloths and baby rhinos of course). 

This question about Snow Leopards in India (best to look in Ulley valley or Hemis?) to maximise mammal watching time has been posted on behalf of a couple going there for non mammal-related activities… So feel free to save their souls by not commenting anything useful. 

Chris and Mathilde Stuart have uploaded yet another useful mammalwatching tool: checklists! From South Africa to Western Australia, you can find a bunch of them here to turn yet another relaxing family holiday into a bloodthirsty hunt.  

There’s also been another question about Souslik around Budapest airport, so you can comment here if if you know where to see them. 

Royle Safaris are hosting a trip to the Ivory Coast next year in search of Pygmy Hippos, after successfully seeing them this year. Check out this post if you’re interested in joining – even I think this would be fun, and not only because Pygmy Hippo sounds like the sort of thing my dad would call me (lovingly, I think). 

Finally, Vladimir Dinets has announced he’ll no longer be participating in the traditional mammalwatching reporting on the website. I hope he will still be able to enjoy seeing mammals in his own time, under less pressure. It’s also worth noting that one of his reasons is the difficulty of combining mammalwatching with family. For some strange reason, I can think of someone who’s never had any issues with this balance… but maybe that’s because this someone chooses to drag his children into the hyena lair bat caves and through the crocodile infested rivers instead. So I think Vladimir’s decision is an admirable one! 

If you would like to subscribe only to weekly updates like these from mammalwatching.com, you can visit this page.

Thanks for reading:) 

Katy

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Katy Hall

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